


Target Practice

by Winterling42



Series: The Woods [6]
Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, LGBTQ Jewish Character(s), Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 05:11:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11937006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: Ral gets conscripted into some Rakdos activities.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Jewish Ral inspired by this most amazing fic [Spark](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5997763/chapters/13779397) by Rastaban. Seriously. Go read this fic. It is essential Ral, essential Ravnica, and wonderful in so many ways. <3

Ral had known, theoretically, that something was…off about the Rakdos club. That they recruited freshman without an ounce of common sense and that they tended to be enthusiastic about the creative use of baseball bats. What he hadn’t expected was getting kidnapped in the middle of a late-night study session.

They weren’t even quiet about it. Ral could hear them coming up the library stairs from a mile away, clanking and jingling with all their chain-metal jewelry. He turned up the volume on his iPod and kept working at one of the weird, alchemical problems Mizzet assigned his students sometimes. It was only _mostly_ punishment work, because as far as Ral could tell this was one part of a larger equation that probably had something to do with Mizzet’s current research into air pressure dynamics. If he was feeling suicidal, he could probably steal a copy of the problems Maree and Crix were working on to try and piece the whole thing together.

Ral was still thinking about this interesting plan (and procrastinating work on his own problem) when someone very tall and leathery tapped his shoulder. He looked up with a scolding already on his lips, but never let it be said that the Rakdos were subtle. The tap on his shoulder was instantly followed by a punch to the face, and searing retorts went out the window after that.

“Fuck your mother with a screwdriver!” There had definitely been brass knuckles attached to that punch; Ral could feel the cold imprint of metal under the throbbing bruises. “What the fuck do you fucking want?”

There were five Rakdos thugs standing in the door between the study room and the rest of the library, all of them copiously clad in cheap black leather and decorative chrome spikes. At least Ral hoped they were decorative. The one who’d hit him stepped up and hauled Ral to his feet, poking his long pale nose too close to an eye. “You coming quietly, Izzet bitch? Or you want some more convincing first?”

All five of them growled in sync, and Ral managed to raise on bruised eyebrow. “Am I invited to a party?” He said, mock-surprised. “Did I miss my engraved—“ He _was_ going to say invitation, but it came out more like, “Invi-tation,” because Thug #1 slammed a knee into his gut before he could get out the last word. “Seriously though,” Ral gasped, fumbling his way past the knee-jerk snark reaction and into something more useful. “Kidnapping a student from the library?”

Two of the thugs behind him looked at each other and shrugged. “You were here. We came to get you.”

“No more talking!” Thug 1 hauled him up by the collar of his shirt and shoved him out into the hallway. “Zarek, you try to run and you’ll regret it.”

“No doubt,” Ral muttered to himself, already looking for an exit.

It shouldn’t be so easy, Ral though. It shouldn’t be _possible_ for the librarian to just stare at her desk as he was marched past her. There was always the possibility of him running out of here screaming for help, but honestly, that wasn’t Ral’s style. The bruise on his face should have been enough to get _someone_ to call the Azorius, right?

But the thugs took him past the history building and into an ill-lit street towards the dorms, and no one said a G-d damn thing. Not even Ral. A dangerous curiosity was brewing in the back of his mind, wondering who would be ballsy enough to pull this off. Wondering why they would want to. Briefly he considered what Jace had said a few weeks ago, about making himself a target, but he discarded it just as quickly. From what little he knew of the guilds, one couldn’t just kidnap another without serious repercussions. And Mizzet may be a pain in the ass, but he wouldn’t take kindly to some Rakdos cronies pulling him away from alchemical work.

They took him down a set of stairs, down to the basement of a dorm he didn’t recognize. Hadn’t the Rakdos been banned from club “activities” on campus turf? The door was locked—not with the electronic passes that Ral had long since created his own master key to, but with a black iron key that looked like something out of Downton Abbey. Ral waited for them to open the door with his arms crossed, tapping one foot impatiently. At the darkness that yawned out, though, the tiny part of Ral’s head that retained an ounce of common sense pinged out a warning. Of course, the moment he hesitated, thug #2 shoved him forward. Ral huffed and swaggered inside, pretending that it was entirely of his own volition.

The basement was just as dark and creepy as he’d expected, and somehow worse lit than the maintenance tunnels Ral had ‘explored’ with Jace a few weeks ago. Orange light bulbs flickered damply every few feet, shining off of stainless steel chains and other pointy things.

“Is there an entry fee to the Funhouse? Because I think I left my wallet back at the library.” Ral stifled a flinch, expecting thug #1 to leave another bruise on the undamaged side of his face. But the goon only clapped a brass-knuckled hand on Ral’s shoulder, grinning in the ghastly orange light.

“Entrance fee’s already paid, shock man. You’ve got the best seat in the house.”

“Great,” Ral muttered under his breath, and then they were there.

 _There_ had probably been a gym or something at one point—a big, low-ceilinged room covered in bouncy rubber flooring and mirror along two of the walls. Despite the sheer number of people here (at least twenty) the room practically echoed with extra space. It wasn’t much, as far as theaters went, but Ral thought it probably didn’t have to be to impress this crowd. They couldn’t possibly be students, at least not most of them. That amount of metal hanging off of your face would be recognizable, surely. And the only thing these people had in common was the twisted glee on every shiny, sweaty face he saw.

“This may or may not be a problem. Schrödinger’s problem, you could say. Possibly a matter of quantum mechanics—“

“Ral Zarek.” The cold voice rang out sharply against the metallic muttering of the crowd. Ral didn’t recognize the woman who stepped forward, but that might have been because of the clownish face paint she was wearing, all reds and blacks and sickly whites. “Our newest rival. Welcome to the circus.”

“Are we supposed to be rivals?” Ral asked. “Because if so, I’m definitely ahead of you on that curve. I don’t even know who you are.”

The face paint looked even uglier when she scowled like that. Someone should let her know. “My name is Exava, guildmage of Lord Rakdos. Do you know why you’re here, little mage?”

“Lightning mage yes, ‘little’ not so much,” Ral said with his arms crossed. He tapped his foot to show his impatience with Exava’s speech-writing skills. “And I’ve got some things to get back to _if_ you don’t mind—“

The whip came out of nowhere, lashing across his shoulder with a hiss and a rattle of chain links. Ral yelped before he could think about it, a spontaneous reaction to being hit with a _fucking chain whip_. It’d torn the sleeve of his shirt, leaving a sharp, bloody line on his skin.

“What the _fuck_ is this?”

“There’s no reason for this, Zarek, I want you to know.” Exava sounded stupid-smug, but she was also pretty chill standing there in her demon outfit, and Ral had a black eye, so who was really winning here? “This isn’t for revenge or some grand plan of my Lord’s. This is just for fun.”

Ral cursed again and flung lightning at her. He had gotten better since that night in the tunnels—though he hadn’t yet found a ‘safe’ place to practice. Where safe meant he didn’t have to pay for whatever blew up. So this time, instead of a jagged streak as wide as he was, this lightning was smaller, more precise. A _snap-flash_ of light and a crack of thunder that had the Rakdos goons scrambling to the edges of the room.

But Exava didn’t move. She just stood there, one hand on her hip, and tapped her high-heeled boots on the padded, rubber floor. “Come on, Zarek,” she scoffed. “Surely you can do better than that.” This time, when the whip lashed out towards him, Ral dropped to the floor to avoid the whistling chain. Exava laughed, like he’d done exactly what she wanted, and a second long chain cut across his hands, snagging on skin and leaving bruises deep as any punch.

Ral was getting tired of this game. He gritted his teeth, and got up. The problem wasn’t that he didn’t believe the Rakdos capable of this—the problem wasn’t even that these were RU students, that these were people he might recognize in a classroom or passing in the hall. The problem was that Ral had always known places—and people—like this existed a hair’s breath away from civilized life. He was a gay Jewish man growing up in the twenty-first century, alright? He didn’t need to be _convinced_ that these people existed. He just didn’t want to have to face them on his own.


	2. Chapter 2

Afterwards, he couldn’t have said for sure how long it went on. Exava goaded lightning out of him, the crowd moved in to kick him if he didn’t get up, and always the chains wrapped around his hands and feet and chest, leaving bloody streaks wherever they touched. He cursed and landed a few good hits of his own, but there were a lot of them and only one of him. They never even let him get close to Exava, and without a ground for his lightning he was as good as naked.

Eventually he fell and wouldn’t get up. Not because he couldn’t, but because he hurt less with his arms curled around his face and his knees curled up to protect his stomach. The jeering metalheads moved in again, and when he didn’t stumble up from their first few hits they hauled him to his feet, hands hard as the steel they were flashing.

“Is the little Izzet boy ready for bed?” Exava cooed. Ral didn’t have the energy to even look at her, though she sounded pretty close. Maybe close enough to get his hands around her grease-painted throat.

“Fuck you.”

“You’ve gotten a lot less creative over time, Zarek. I thought the Izzet were known for their brains. Or at least they’re known for their tendency to splatter them all over the walls.” She was _definitely_ close enough to reach. Ral forced himself to stay still as her pointed boots came into view. “That, your guild and mine have in common.”

There were three things that almost happened at the same time. Ral _almost_ shoved himself to his feet, pulled out of the hold of the Rakdos guards, and slammed Exava down into her stupid rubber floor. Exava _almost_ pulled out a wickedly curved knife, small and sharp and precise. The thing that happened just before those two events precluded them, however, because the thing that happened before those two were the double doors at the end of the room bursting open with enough force to slam against the walls.

And Jace was standing there, in his nice button-down shirt and blue vest, shoulders hunched like a bull about to charge. Ral might have laughed if the relief in his lungs had left any room for air. “Let him go.”

The Rakdos crowd cleared a path between Jace and Exava (and thus, Ral) as quick as humanly possible, their ugly laughs and cheers dulled down to silence. Ral glanced over at grease-paint, but she was looking annoyed rather than thoughtful. Remembering out Jace’s _last_ mission had gone as Guildpact, Ral wasn’t overly confident of his success rate. But he had to admit that, if nothing else, Jace did annoying superior _really_ well. “I’ll say it again, Exava, and its not a request. Let him go.”

Exava laughed, but she walked away from Ral and the two thugs holding him up and that was what mattered. That was what made a tiny corner of the fear Ral definitely wasn’t acknowledging go away. “Or what, _Guildpact_? I already told you, all our papers are in order. That’s why your little law bitch isn’t here, isn’t it?”

“I’m not here as the Guildpact.” Jace stood in the doorway, and Ral wanted to say something like _run_ but he was preoccupied right now trying to breathe. “I’m here as Jace Beleren.”

She laughed. Exava put her hands on her hips and _laughed_ at him, and the Rakdos crowd laughed with her. Jace walked right up to her, stopped just out of stabbing range and held up his hands as if to say, _come get me_. A silence fell, so quickly that Ral could almost feel the air vanish from the room. Into that silence, Jace spoke at just the moment Exava should have lunged to gut him.

 _“Drop the knife_ ,” he said, and his eyes flared blue.

Exava froze. A struggle went on, silently and without motion, except where the muscles in her arms and back twitched. Finally, she dropped the knife and growled low in her throat. Jace looked away, his gaze focusing on the two thugs holding Ral up. Ral wasn’t sure how he knew it—Jace’s eyes were invisible under that impossible, unsettling blue.

“ _Let him go,_ ” he said, and unlike Exava these two didn’t put up a struggle. Unfortunately this didn’t give Ral any time to brace himself, and after a wavering second he collapsed onto the scorched rubber of the floor. _Ral. Can you walk?_ Jace didn’t really ask it. There was something about his voice that made the hair on the back of Ral’s neck stand up. Something that crept in behind his ears, nudged a place in his head that meant _must_ instead of _could_.

“A little help would be nice,” Ral gritted out. Jace stood still for a moment too long, as frozen as Exava in front of him.

 _Right_ , he said at last, and made his way back to Ral, weaving through the growling Rakdos. His eyes didn’t fade, even as he reached down to haul Ral to his feet.

“Fuck.” It wasn’t eloquent, but it summed up the wrung out, bruised muscles in his back and legs and sides. His bones and tendons creaked dangerously at every movement. It wasn’t that he didn’t _want_ to run out of this hell hole as fast as his feet could carry him. The problem was that his feet weren’t working very well right now. He had to lean most of his weight on Jace’s shoulder, shuffling along and swallowing the pained sounds that kept crawling up his throat.

The damp concrete stench of the basement was the best thing Ral had ever smelled. He limped along with Jace, who was out of breath and shaking, and tried not to think about how far away the exit was.


	3. Chapter 3

There was a car waiting outside, though it wasn’t the campus police van he’d been half hoping for. Jace had to help him into the shotgun seat of a typical student POS before sliding to the driver’s side and gunning the engine. (It _whirred_ instead of growling, and Ral laughed out loud. He laughed a little bit harder when they left the Rakdos in the rearview mirror.) Jace kept shooting him worried looks, but it wasn’t exactly easy to drive through RU and Ral had to tell him to watch out for pedestrians twice before the all-powerful Guildpact put his eyes back on the road.

It was late, but not so late that there weren’t students still out drinking. Less than five hours, Ral guessed, though he couldn’t be more exact without—“My stuff,” he said, trying not to croak like a frog. He didn’t think he’d shouted very much, but he was hoarse as a bullfrog. “I left it. The library.”

“It’s closed now,” Jace said without looking at him. “We’ll go in the morning.”

Ral wanted to ask questions. He wanted to ask **_we’ll_** _go in the morning?_ and he wanted to know why Jace came to get him. Or he wanted to know why it took so damn long. Or he wanted to know what the Rakdos were doing on campus turf. He wanted to know all of it, but there’s a lot of effort behind pushing all those questions out of his mind and into thin air. Ral just didn’t have the energy right now.

Now, outside of that room, he could acknowledge that he’d been overconfident since the lightning had come when he called. He’d thought that it changed things, fundamentally. That having a superpower would protect him more than his own razor-sharp wits and mostly-fit physique could. That when skinheads came calling, he could be curious instead of afraid. He had to face a tough few minutes figuring out how to live with that kind of stupidity in himself, but what it came down to was simple enough: it was just a hypothesis. It got proven wrong, and it was time to make a new one. Scientists didn’t care how many mistakes it took to get somewhere, as long as you kept going.

Though he could have done without the beating, probably.

Jace parked at a snazzy townhouse on the street just outside the University. He came around to help Ral out of the car, but Ral just glared and levered himself up by leaning (heavily) on the door. “I can do it.”

Jace frowned but backed away a few steps. “I—I’ll get the door.”

Ral grumbled at himself as he stumbled after Jace, holding himself up by sheer will. _Nice, very nice Ral_. At least the voice in his head didn’t sound like Jace anymore. _Could have at least said_ ** _thanks_** _before being an asshole_.

“Jace.” Ral forced himself up the stairs until they were both standing on the doorstep. Jace stilled, turned his head just a little so he could see Ral out of the corner of one eye. The bluish light of the streetlamp gave his face an echo of the chilling blue command he’d radiated earlier, but instead of scaring Ral it just felt…familiar. A part of Jace so obvious he was amazed it’d taken this long for him to put a name to it. “Thanks. For coming to get me.” _I’m not sure why or how you did it, but thanks_.

The Guildpact nodded, just a little, and led the way as the door clicked open. Ral was too busy putting one foot in front of the other to properly take it in, but he liked what little he saw of the place. Wood floors, easy to slide across instead of lifting his feet once he’d gotten out of his shoes. Big ceilings, soft pillows and low tables that screamed either IKEA or _modernist asshole_. Sometimes both. Jace flicked on a light once they got to a bedroom. His bedroom, judging by the stacks of books on the tables and the rumpled sheets. At this point, Ral would have lain on a bed of nails rather than walk another ten feet, so he collapsed without a fight. He thought about arranging things so that he collapsed with his legs and feet also on the bed, but that seemed like a lot of work too, and he gave up on it.

“Hey Jace?” He _wasn’t_ whispering, it was just that his throat was so sore.

“Yeah?”

“What’d that mean? You not being Guildpact.”

“Hold on. I’m going to get the rest of you on the bed.” Jace was a scrawny little guy, but he managed to haul Ral’s uncooperative legs to one side so that at least all of him was lying on the bed. He was sideways, but at least he was on the bed. Everything hurt. A smaller hurt might have kept him awake, might have forced him to focus on it even as the hours dragged themselves along. But when _everything_ hurt, it was enough to not be hurting anywhere _new_. Ral could barely keep his eyes open.

Somewhere in there, he was sure Jace sat down next to him and ran a fingertip across a line of chain bruises. “The Azorius wouldn’t come. Permits were in order. She must have planned this for _months_. But I couldn’t let them…I’m sorry, Ral.”

Ral made a questioning kind of sound and curled into the soft touch, pressing his forehead against the cool, soft fabric of Jace’s slacks.

“I think they came for you because of me.” Jace was whispering now. “You’re only in this mess because of me.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Ral said, but he wasn’t sure if it was audible at all. It seemed awfully unfair that his breath should rattle so loudly but that he couldn’t make a few words come out whole. “It was just a faulty hypothesis.”


End file.
